Note to Self

by thethreepennyguignol

I’m content right now. I’ve been listening to eighties pop, trying to French inhale with my new vaporiser, and dancing with the cat all night, and I feel good. Which feels like something close to a miracle, because a few months ago, I was so depressed that I was legitimately struggling to get out of bed in the morning, and when I’m in those states, it feels like the only thing facing you is this unassailable wall of shit, on the other side of which is another, more festering, more rancid pile of shit – you know, something like Game of Thrones’ treatment of women in season four. It feels fucking endless, and even though I could lie there, one hand in the eleventh bag of crisps of the day and the other to my mouth so I could chew off what remained of the skin around my fingers, and know that I had gotten out of worse in the past, I just for the life of me couldn’t see a way out of this one. It felt permanent – terminal, in the least fatal way possible.

It’s not hard to be depressed – fuck, it’s shit-easy to not notice how far you’re slipping downward until you’re having to tip your head back to keep just your mouth above water. Being depressed is easy, but being depressed and carrying out your basic life responsibilities (you know, like working, socialising, showering, ever) is hellacious. Because the bad parts get stuck in your head worse than the good parts. Of course they do: there’s a mundanity to happiness that gets undervalued, an easiness, an effortlessness (at least for me). Yes, I remember specific happy events, but generally being happy doesn’t make much of an impression on me. I only notice happiness when I’m really, deeply not, and by then, I’m already in trouble.

So I’m writing this as a note to myself. Right now, I’m happy in a very uneventful way. I’m going to listen to that new episode of Dead Ringers I’ve been saving and clean the house, sit on the couch and enjoy the way the chalky-red building opposite my apartment looks next to the bright blue evening sky, and I’m going to be content about it. I know that the bad periods, the depressive ones, are never done with, but I do know that while I’m not in them, I can at least preserve this little bit of happiness to remind myself that it’s not unnattainable. This might be cheesy to some of you, but I know I’m going to come back and read this post – hell, just remember that it exists – and I’m going to be glad I wrote it. It’s not going to fix things, and this little snippet of positivity won’t make it all go away, but it might make that wall seem a little easier to scale. And I’ll take that.